The present invention relates to a footstep for an aircraft galley, and more particularly to a footstep with anti-vibration characteristics and improved spring design to overcome premature failure and comply with applicable regulations.
Commercial aircraft that are used for lengthy flights are typically equipped with a galley to cater to those passengers. The galley of an aircraft provides the flight attendants with an area to store, cook, and prepare food and beverages for the crew and passengers. Galleys include all of the equipment and devices to perform the passenger service, arranged in as efficient a manner as possible. Aircraft galleys must utilize available space in an economical manner since storage space is at a premium on an aircraft. To store everything that is required, galleys are often equipped with tall bays that include various compartments to house the equipment and other service items. In large aircraft the bays are overhead and deep, and the upper areas require a certain height and arm length to reach back into a deep bay to retrieve an item that is stored or has settled to the rear of the compartment. If the object cannot be reached, a footstep may be necessary to retrieve such items in elevated bays. However, footsteps can be a hazard if they are left in the galley aisle, and space must then be created for the footstep itself. Without some assistance, however, the rear portion of an upper compartment may be inaccessible, wasting vital storage space. What is needed is a safe and effective way to retrieve an object that has settled in the rear of an aircraft bay so that all available compartment space can be utilized.
To solve this problem, some galleys have been designed with a retractable step that can be released from a storage compartment, used to retrieve objects from the upper galley, and then returned to its stowed position. An example of such a footstep is U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,609 to Ham et al., issued Mar. 23, 1993. Ham teaches an automatic retractable step that is stowed in a cavity in the galley and can be extended manually from its stowed position, stood upon to retrieve an elevated object, and one or more helical springs return the step to the stowed position after use.
The problem with retractable steps such as that taught by Ham is that the repeated wear by the withdrawal and release of the step leads to premature failure of the device. Aircraft operators require 60,000 cycles of use by the step without load, but prior art steps could only achieve up to 11,000 cycles before failure. The absence of sufficient endurance resistance led to the development of the present invention, which has been tested and proven to meet or exceed the 60,000 cycle requirement even with 75 kg of load, and up to 120,000 cycles with a zero load condition.